Castings .

Egg as a whole

Egg being disassembled

Egg is broken into 4 parts

front view

Central portion top view. Observe the grains alignment , outward

One year back when i was in second year and was being taught by the legendary Satyendra sir i was highly inspired by his lectures on metal casting. He is an extraordinary teacher and his lectures were very knowledgeable. He taught us Manufacturing Technology 1 . Imagine me, a pyromaniac by birth being taught about metal casting. In tenth i went to Vizag steel plant and there i saw a river of molten metal flowing a few feet away from me. Then i realized that there is nothing which can match the beauty of molten metal.

So my passion for metal casting went to such heights that one day i decided to really do it ! Since its not easy to melt metal i thought of doing it on wax.

With wax :
I took an egg, made a small hole on the top of it and emptied all the contents. Then after it dried i used a funnel and filled the egg shell with molten wax. After a few minutes the wax would solidify and contract. Since i dint use a riser i had to manually fill the void every time. One day i managed to break open a wax casting an inside i found shrinkage voids.
1) The two depressions you see in the central green portions are the shrinkage voids, I had no intention to create them but they are the result of multi-directonal cooling.
2) You can see the direction of cooling by following the way the grains are aligned(radially outward). It is multi directional cooling.

Observe the depressions in the central green portions, shrinkage voids

With metal :

I went to my dads yard and took some basic training with the oxy acytlene torch. I made a small hole in the ground and cut a sprue for the metal to enter. I placed a lump of pig iron by the mouth of the hole and lit the torch. The lump got very hot and melted then it drained into the hole i made in the ground. The metal was soo hot that it was glowing white. After the hole filled i waited for a while and later cooled it by pouring water. Then i plucked it out of the hole and this is what i have achieved ......an ugly lump of metal oxide .

Porous lump , mostly metal oxide

Im still trying to do better. My aim is to make a metallic egg.

The Crow shit dilemma

You know what scares hostlers most ? Its the crows.
Our hostel is surrounded by lush green trees. Good isnt it ? Actually awesome. By evening a large number of crows perch on the trees. They rest till 5:00 am and then go back to work waking. While they rest they excrete. The road to the hostel is a patchwork of white on black. Of course the white colour is the crows work and the roads are cleaned regularly by sweepers.Walking to the hostel at night is a daunting task unless you like crow droppings. You can only hear crow shit hitting the ground and make a loud "SPLAT !". Its like a thriller .... there will be many near misses . If you are foolish enough to park your bike in the action zone your vehicle is bound to get a new look by morning. My friend's black R15 transformed overnight into a gorgeous 'R15 Dalmatian', credit goes to the crows team work. 

Now here is my dilemma. Should i walk on the black patches of the road or the white patches ??




CASE 1 : I walk on the black patches of the road


Why is the road still black ??  Coz there are no crows above or the crows above havent crapped yet ??


CASE 2 : I walk over the white patches

Should i assume that the crows above me have already crapped so they wont crap anymore ?


Right now im following Case 2 which i found is not fool proof. One crow successfully did its job........ :)